That’s a big if. But the man didn’t just pull the number out of thin air. “News sources” have been “reporting” since Election Day that three million “illegal aliens” cast fraudulent votes for Hillary Clinton.

Snopes didn’t find a shred of evidence to support the claim, whose source it traced solely to “a pair of tweets by someone named Gregg Phillips, whose Twitter profile identifies him as the founder of VoteStand.”

In fact, the only person I’ve found who tried to vote twice was Terri Lynn Rote of Iowa. She feared her first vote for Trump would get changed to Hillary Clinton, so she tried again because “the polls are rigged.” Wherever did she get that idea?

Another word for fake news is propaganda – and whether or not Vladimir Putin affected the election, the disinformation techniques favored by totalitarian governments have now infected our public discourse, including from Donald Trump’s Twitter account.

“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history,” George Orwell

About James G. Blaine

Most of us undervalue what seem our tiny contributions to our communities and the world. As a result, we feel powerless, even victimized. But, like the butterfly effect in science, the lives we lead with our families, in our communities, and at work – all the so-called little things we do – collectively change the world. As I grow older, my ambition grows more modest but not less important: to participate fully and to contribute what I can. That’s my goal with this blog.

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James G. Blaine

Most of us undervalue what seem our tiny contributions to our communities and the world. As a result, we feel powerless, even victimized. But, like the butterfly effect in science, the lives we lead with our families, in our communities, and at work – all the so-called little things we do – collectively change the world. As I grow older, my ambition grows more modest but not less important: to participate fully and to contribute what I can. That’s my goal with this blog.